<p>My Political Science professor recently assigned us a research paper. As we were going over the guidelines, a student asked if we could use Wikipedia as a source, and the professor agreed. This surprised me somewhat, as my high school teachers were always so anti-Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Is this particularly common?</p>
<p>hahaha...no. Wikipedia is nice for quick and dirty reference if you don't have much of a need to be entirely sure you're getting accurate information. Most of the time, common knowledge stuff will be correct, but beyond that it's really a gamble. If you wrote an article for an even dubiously respectable journal and cited Wikipedia, they'd laugh right you out of whatever field you were in!
The prof probably just didn't feel like dealing w/ it and or is used to immature, dubiously-prepared college freshmen, assuming this is a freshmen class. Otherwise...well, I guess I've seen senior-level courses where professors let their students slide, but I think it's a real shame. Students like that shouldn't be allowed to pass the class, much less receive a college degree.</p>
<p>Most of my professors don't speak too much of Wikipedia, but I have one who thinks it's a great resource and he assigned Wkipedia articles as reading on several occasions.</p>
<p>All of mine don't. They say they are not reliable sources.</p>
<p>I have always found the information on Wikipedia to be very reliable and easy to understand.</p>
<p>Wanted to add that most of my professors allow us to use Wikipedia as a starting point for research papers, but we are not allowed to quote from the site.</p>
<p>Just not highly encouraged.</p>
<p>None. </p>
<p>10char.</p>
<p>We can't cite wikipedia, but it's silly to anyway. It's not good for a source in and of itself, but if the page has been created properly it's a nice source to find other, more reputable sources for information.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a prof signing off on it as a source. I have however had a few that suggested to students start there to get a brief intro and then follow the source links should they prove useful in the research process. Even that though is a relative rarity.</p>
<p>You use wikipedia to figure out the basics. Their footnotes can be quite good though.</p>
<p>I like the footnotes/sources in the wiki articles.</p>
<p>None allow it.</p>
<p>None. I do not even bother asking as the rule is so clear cut.</p>
<p>None. I never cite it, but I will use it as a base to get an overview and basic understanding of a topic. From there, I'll look at the secondary sources. If there are any worthwhile ideas/quotes, I will use them from the secondaries and properly cite any ideas/quotes.</p>
<p>none have allowed me to use wikipedia as a source for my paper. i've only been allowed to use it as a reference to get a basic understanding of the topic.</p>
<p>on a similar note, how many professors allow the use of encyclopedias as sources for papers?</p>
<p>I do the same thing as BP-The guy, just use wikipedia for basic info, never citing it in my paper. I know our expos writing prof takes an anti-wikipedia stance.</p>
<p>Wikipedia is an encyclopedia yo. </p>
<p>Cite permalinks, first of all.</p>
<p>I think it should be acceptable to cite Wikipedia for "quick and dirty" information. (For example, explaining what an action potential is on a chem lab report, when you don't wish to focus on action potentials -- you just want to give background.) Cite permalinks. Check the history. </p>
<p>(I also happen to be an admin on the English Wikipedia.)</p>
<p>Using Wikipedia as reference may be allowed, but probably won't get you high marks.
A practical concern is that it's always changing, since it's free for editing by others. Second, many articles on Wikipedia are not original or lack citation. So it's kind of awkward to use something that's pseudo-plagarized. Finally, it's not a completely reliable source. But if it's a good article, if should contain links to where you can get the information. I'd use that instead.</p>
<p>
[quote]
A practical concern is that it's always changing, since it's free for editing by others.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That's why you use permalinks, duh. :)</p>
<p>There's also this nifty "cite this article" link on the side.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Finally, it's not a completely reliable source.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Neither is Encyclopedia Britannica, which has a similar degree of error.</p>
<p>If you picked the global warming article for instance, which is a featured article, we beat EB by a mile in terms of accuracy and depth.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Second, many articles on Wikipedia are not original or lack citation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It depends on what you mean by "not original". First of all, we use the GFDL licence. We're also extremely concerned about copyright. This means we can't simply copy stuff of other pages, and when we find something like that (read: it <em>will</em> be found, often within minutes because we have automatic robots which google subsmissions and check licences) -- we delete them, tag them for copyvios, do the appropriate bureaucratic procedures, etc. </p>
<p>You should also know that plenty of scientists EDIT Wikipedia -- and some are even sysops. Why? These scientists see Wikipedia as a promising channel to educate the public. Do you know why? Because the media generally fails about 90% of the time. (See BBC and their stupid animal communication stories that drives linguists nuts.) </p>
<p>The other thing is that Wikipedia has plenty of mirrors. We don't mind if Wikipedia text is posted elsewhere verbatim, because we're open source. And if we take other material, we do cite it (for intellectual reasons) -- but this of course is a separate issue from copyright. (Remember, copyright is a LEGAL issue, while citation is an intellectual honesty issue!) The other thing is that we demand citation generally not because of wishing to avoid plagiarism, but rather to substantiate assertions (e.g. evidence). Where we take material, you might find we take material from other texts with GFDL licences, open source licences, material released into the public domain, authors who release their stuff into public domain or GFDL for us, texts whose copyright have expired e.g. Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 (and we explicitly stub that at the bottom where we do that, and also we have a tag to try to merge EB 1911 language into our language and also keep the NPOV up to date, since sometimes EB 1911 has that "imperialist Westerncentric" sneer to it.).</p>
<p>The other thing people should know is how Wikipedia works. There's this link on the side called "Recent Changes". At any time of day, hour, minute, second, we have taskforces of people who are on something called RC patrol, who hunt down new submissions, articles, edits and so forth -- especially from "high-suspicion" groups like new users and anonymous users. We also have a way to flag articles as "checked by trusted users". Every time an article is edited by someone outside the "trusted user" pools (generally user veterans, people who participate regularly in the Wikipedia bureaucracy, on top of sysops), articles become unflagged.</p>
<p>You might ask why we don't go the other way and say, keep an edit on hold while it gets "approved". That was the Nupedia model -- the predecessor of Wikipedia. A few dozen articles in a few months. And who watches the watchers? The "watcher" pool will also be very small. Nay, the community polices itself. We also have that other philosophy that also happens to be found at UVA: *For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. *</p>
<p>Also, there are these things called "discussion pages" and "history pages" you guys. I'm not even getting into the Wikipedia metapages where the heart of the bureaucracy is located. (Have any of you seen the [public] administrator's noticeboard?)</p>
<p>I'm not even talking about those nifty "delete" and "block user" button tools that sysops get yet. </p>
<p>none, but I read the article anyway, and when wiki quotes something i use the quote, and just cite their same citation. (As long as it is a book, journal, ect.) I generally wont use other internet sources. They're always looked down upon. (Too easy, I suppose.)</p>